Introduction
Digital transformation is increasingly impacting various aspects of life and business every year. For a business to remain competitive, having just standard informational websites is no longer sufficient; mobile and web applications are required that not only provide users with information but also allow them to perform functions such as ordering or acquiring goods and services.
For example, modern banks can no longer rely solely on a website that provides information; they need to offer online tools for their clients, like a personal account where users can manage their accounts, investments, and loans. Even small businesses require convenient tools to increase conversion rates, such as scheduling an appointment with a doctor or a hairdresser, or booking a table at a restaurant or a children's playroom for birthday celebrations.
Business owners need timely access to information in a convenient format regarding the state of their company, such as the collection of statistical data and analytics across various production departments, or departmental productivity. Often, each department collects this data in its own way and may use different tools, which requires the owner to spend a lot of personal time figuring it all out. This can indirectly or directly impact the company's efficiency and ultimately its profitability. Here, too, digital transformation and the development of web or mobile applications can be of assistance.
Technology does not stand still and is constantly evolving, and what was used a few years ago may no longer be relevant today, or what was impossible to achieve a few years ago has now become a reality. There are more modern tools available that help create web and mobile applications faster and of higher quality. Based on my personal observations and experience, I would like to share my vision of which technologies and tools will be in demand in the near future and why they should be considered when creating a modern web application.
Single page application (SPA)
Let's clarify some terminology. A Single Page Application (SPA) is a web application where components are loaded once on a single page, and content is fetched as needed. When navigating between sections of the application, the page does not fully reload, but only the necessary data is loaded and displayed.
Single Page Applications significantly outperform traditional web applications in terms of speed and usability. With SPAs, you can achieve the effect of a website operating like a desktop application without reloads and significant delays.
If a few years ago, single-page applications had virtually no support for search engine optimization and were mainly used for creating user dashboards and admin panels, today it has become much easier to create a single-page application with full SEO support. By using single-page applications with server-side rendering, this issue has been completely resolved. In other words, it is still a single-page application, but upon the first request, the server generates not just data, but creates a ready-to-display HTML page, allowing search engines to receive complete pages with all the meta-information and semantic markup.
With the development of tools for creating client-side web applications, the development and transition to single-page applications in this and the upcoming years will only continue to grow. If you have an old application that is outdated and operates slowly, also requiring a full page reload when navigating between sections, then this year is a great time to upgrade to a fast single-page applicationātechnology now allows this to be done quite quickly and efficiently.
Having a modern and fast website is great, but I want to honestly inform you: not all applications can be easily converted to single-page applications, and the transition can be costly! Therefore, it is essential to understand who needs this transition and why.
To help you understand, in the table below, I will provide several examples of when the development or transition to a SPA is suitable and justified, and when it is not.
FOR
If you want to create a modern, fast application and you aim for it to be used not only as a web version but also mobile or even desktop, with all processes and computations happening on a remote or cloud server. Furthermore, you want all clients to have a single interaction interface without the need to make code changes on the server when adding new clients.
For example: social networks, aggregators, SaaS platforms (software as a service), marketplaces.
If you have a store or web service, and you know it's slow, causing people to leave, you want to improve speed, understand the value of customers, and are willing to pay for an upgrade starting at one million rubles.
You have a mobile application that uses the site's API, but the site is slow and requires complete content reloads when transitioning between pages.
AGAINST
If your target audience does not use modern browsers and devices.
For example: specific corporate areas, such as developing internal systems for banks, medical institutions, and education.
If your primary activities are conducted offline and you are not ready to offer any services online, and you simply need to attract customers.
If you already have an online store or web service that sells well, you do not see customer churn or complaints.
If you have a working application that cannot be adapted to SPA and you need to rewrite everything from scratch using different technologies but are not willing to spend several million on it.
For example: there is a boxed website or some old custom-built, monolithic code.
Progressive Web Applications
Progressive Web Applications (PWA) are a product of the combined evolution of native applications and websites. Essentially, it's a web application that looks and behaves like a real native application, capable of receiving push notifications, working offline, etc. Users do not need to download the app from the App Store or Google Play; they can simply save it to their desktop.
As a technology or development approach, PWA has been evolving since 2015 and has recently gained immense popularity in the e-commerce sector.
Several real-life examples:
- Last year, the Best Western River North hotel was able to increase its revenue by 300% after launching a new site with PWA support.
- The Arabic site OpenSooq.com was able to increase site visit duration by 25% and leads by 260% after implementing PWA support.
- The popular dating service Tinder was able to reduce loading speed from 11.91 seconds to 4.69 seconds by developing a PWA. Moreover, the app weighs 90% less than its native Android counterpart.
The fact that a major e-commerce platform like Magento launched an early developer version of PWA Studio in 2018 highlights the importance of this technology. The platform allows for 'out of the box' frontend development based on React for their e-commerce solutions with PWA support.
A tip for those who already have an online project or just an idea for a new mobile-friendly service: donāt rush to write a full-fledged native application; first, consider the PWA technology. It may be the best solution in terms of cost and quality for your product.
A bit from practice. To create a simple native mobile news application, assuming a prepared REST server is available, it takes about 200-300 man-hours for each platform. At an average market rate of 1500-2000 rubles/hour for development, the application could cost around 1 million rubles. However, if developing a web application with full PWA supportāpush notifications, offline mode, and other featuresāit will also take 200-300 man-hours, but the product will be immediately available on all platforms. This means savings of about 2 times, not to mention the absence of fees for placement in app stores.
Serverless
This is yet another modern approach to development. Due to the name, many think that itās truly serverless development, and that thereās no need to write backend code, making it appear that any frontend developer can create a complete web application. But this is not the case!
When creating a serverless application, a server is still required as well as a database. The main difference with this approach is that the back-end code is represented in the form of cloud functions (another name for serverless is FaaS, or Functions as a Service) which allows the application to scale quickly and easily. When developing such an application, the developer can focus on business tasks without worrying about scaling and infrastructure setup, which ultimately speeds up application development and reduces costs. Furthermore, the serverless approach helps save on rental servers, as it uses precisely the amount of resources needed to complete a task, and if there is no load, server time is not used at all and is not charged.
For instance, the large American media company Bustle was able to reduce costs by hosting over 60% by transitioning to serverless. Additionally, Coca-Cola, during the development of an automated beverage vending system, managed to cut hosting costs from $13,000 to $4,500 per year by moving to serverless.
In the past couple of years, due to its novelty and limitations, serverless was primarily used for small projects, startups, and MVPs. However, today, thanks to software evolution, versatility, and the power of server containerization, tools are emerging that remove those limitations, simplifying and speeding up the development of cloud applications.
This means that corporate business scenarios, where cloud modernization was previously deemed impossible (for example, for edge devices, data transmission, or stateful applications), are now a reality. Promising tools include kNative and serverless enterprise.
However, serverless is not a silver bullet for web application development. Like any other technology, it has its advantages and disadvantages, and one must choose this tool with understanding, rather than "driving nails with a microscope" just because it is more advanced.
To help you understand, here are some examples of when to consider serverless when developing a new or enhancing an existing web service:
- When server load is periodic and you pay for idle capacity. For example, we had a client with a network of coffee machines that needed to handle requests and gather statistics only a few hundred or thousands of times a day, while at night the number of requests dropped to just a few dozen. In this case, it is much more efficient to pay only for the actual use of resources, which is why we proposed and implemented a Serverless solution.
- If you do not plan to dive into the technical details of the infrastructure and overpay for the setup and maintenance of servers and load balancers. For example, when developing a marketplace, you may not know what the traffic will be, or on the contrary ā you plan for high traffic and want your application to handle the load effectively, Serverless is an excellent choice.
- If it's necessary to perform some streaming events in the main application, log auxiliary data into tables, or carry out some calculations. For example, collecting analytical data on user actions, processing it in a specific way, and saving it to a database;
- If you need to simplify, unify, or speed up the current application workflow. For example, creating performance-enhancing services for working with images or videos, where users upload videos to the cloud, and a separate function handles transcoding, allowing the main server to continue operating normally.
If you need to process events from third-party services. For example, handling responses from payment systems, or redirecting user data to CRM to speed up the processing of potential clients' requests.
If you have a large application and some parts can be implemented more optimally using a different language than the main one. For instance, if you have a project in Java and need to add new functionality, but there are no available hands, or the implementation in that language might take longer, and there is already a solution in another language, Serverless can assist in this as well.
This is by no means an exhaustive list of tools and technologies that deserve attention; I've only shared what we use every day in our work and know how they can benefit businesses.
Source: habr.com
